SoNIA - Social Network Image Animator

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Social Network Image Animator

What is it?

SoNIA is a Java-based package for visualizing dynamic or longitudinal
"network" data. By dynamic, we mean that in addition to
information about the relations (ties) between various entities
(actors, nodes) there is also information about when these relations
occur, or at least the relative order in which they occur.

Our intention for SoNIA is to read-in dynamic network information
from various formats, aid the user in constructing "meaningful"
layouts, and export the resulting images or "movies" of the network,
along with information about the techniques and parameter settings used
to construct the layouts, and some form of statistic indicating the
"accuracy" or degree of distortion
present in the layout. This is all somewhat ambitious, but not
impossible.

What else is SoNIA for?

In addition, we hope that SoNIA will have other uses. One of the most
important is for it to work as a platform
for the development, testing, and comparison of various static
and dynamic layout techniques.
Because of this, We have attempted to code SoNIA as an OpenSource project in a modular fashion
so that the various layout techniques and tools are fairly
interchangeable, and they can all draw on a common set of utility
functions for common network and layout operations.

Another mode of use
that SoNIA supports is that of a "browser"
for time-based network data. Our intention is to make it as easy
as possible for users (us) to visually inspect sets of relations in
large datasets at varying temporal resolutions and degrees of
aggregation.

Authors

SoNIA is currently under development by Dan McFarland and Skye
Bender-deMoll, originally supported by a
Research Incentive Award provided by Stanford University's Office of Technology and Liscensing (grant # 2-CDZ-108).

The Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington with funds from NIH grants supporting the Network Modeling Project (grants # R01 HD41877 and R01 DA12831), Martina Morris (PI)

A large fraction of the development and support for this project is volunteered.

We would also like to thank the CSDE Network Modeling Team, James Moody, Ben Shaw, Tom Snijders, Christian Steglich, Michael Schweinberger, Kaisa Snellman, Ozgecan Kocak, John Padgett and many others for their contributions at various stages of this project.